Dungeons & Dragons tournament in Keegan Hall

Dungeon Master Dylan Foxlee conducts the Friday game while Sean Rice prepares his next move. Games can last months. Each session may be four or five hours long. (photo by Judah Breitbach)

Keegan Hall’s south side is turned into a temple every Friday. A place where Dungeons and Dragons players come to genuflect. And to play a game in the sun shining through large windows on the second floor.

Imagine a game that lasted weeks. Maybe months. Dylan Foxlee organizes and is the dungeon master of a game that first kicked off in early March. Or maybe late February. No one really remembers. What does matter is the game that is about to commence.

Foxlee’s game isn’t the only ritual that takes place. They also have games on Mondays and Tuesdays. Jacob Fink and Shae Walters are planning a game that will take place on Thursdays.

Fink plays in Foxlee’s game, Walters does not. “Dylan’s game is role play heavy, which involves a lot of improv,” says Walters, “I prefer a more mechanical game. I like to rely on the numbers. The campaign I’m starting with Jacob will be more numbers oriented.”

“Being a dungeon master is about making the game fun for everyone,” says Foxlee. “It’s one part improv, one part storyteller, one part writer.”

Jacob Fink and Shae Walters are planning on starting a game on Thursdays that would involve “More mechanical play and less improv,” according to Walters.

This aspect of their game plays into the hands of drama professor Lara Starcevich, who is putting together an improv skit centered on the D&D player’s game. The play will be showing in June.

I had to rely on my interpreters, Shae, Diana Logg and Finnegan Humphrey for intel on what was going on in the game. At one point the floor was walking on the players in “a twist of irony,” Walters advised me.

Logg threw a Warhead to each new group member that arrived. I thought I had made the cool group when I was tossed a “Super Sour Lemon.” A roar of laughter went up when my face contorted at the effects if the hard candy. Their amusement only heightened when I was bent over the trashcan, clawing the candy from off the inside of my cheek.

Getting a game together isn’t all candy and laughs, however. The Dungeon and Dragons site is banned on campus, as one player put it. Others clarified and said it just wouldn’t work, but that there were plenty of other sites that they used supplementally that it wasn’t a hindrance.

The D&D site has simply been “throttled back,” according to an anonymous source in the I.T. department. The site reportedly takes up too much bandwidth. Bandwidth that is “meant for academic purposes.”Regardless, the D&D players can access their secondary sites just fine, nullifying the school’s efforts.

Meanwhile at the game table, Duncan Sumter-Fazio is dealt 42 acid damage, decimating his health points, or HP. A devastating onslaught, or so I gather by the reaction of the table. “We’re stable,” exclaims Mike Roggenbuck. Sumter-Fazio’s threat has been diminished for now.

The game is interrupted by a phone call, a reminder that another world beckons.